19-year-old Jenelle is clearly the instigator — spewing all sorts of nasty insults at a woman named Britany … before the reality star suddenly socks the other woman in the face with a closed fist.

The two women tussle to the ground … where Jenelle continues to pummel Britany … even AFTER it’s clear she can no longer defend herself.

With Britany bleeding from her face, one of Jenelle’s scumbag friends pulls the reality star off the other woman … while Janelle continues to drop verbal insults.

It’s unclear why Jenelle wanted to fight Britany … but sources connected to the incident claim it had something to do with Jenelle’s boyfriend.

Story developing …

Check the brutal assault here

The counteroffensive has halted a rebel attempt that began last week to extend their control beyond the eastern half of the country, in opposition hands since after the revolt to oust Gadhafi began on Feb. 15. The rebels are struggling to maintain supply lines for weapons, ammunition and food, with many living off junk food, cookies and cans of tuna.

Rebels say they can take on Gadhafi’s elite ground forces, but are outgunned if he uses his air power. Fighter Ali Suleiman pleaded for Western governments to impose a no-fly zone to protect them from more strikes while they waited for rocket launchers, tanks and other heavy weapons to arrive with reinforcements from their headquarters in the eastern city of Benghazi.

“We don’t want a foreign military intervention, but we do want a no-fly zone. We are all waiting for one,” he said.

The U.S. has moved military forces closer to its shores to back up its demand that Gadhafi step down. But enforcing a no-fly zone could take weeks to organize, and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has noted that it must be preceded by a military operation to take out Libya’s air defenses. British Foreign Minister William Hague said Sunday that a no-fly zone over Libya is still in an early stage of planning and ruled out the use of ground forces.

Libya appears to be sliding toward a civil war that could drag out for weeks, or even months, as rebels try to oust Gadhafi after 41 years. Resorting to heavy use of air attacks signaled the regime’s concern that it needed to check the advance of the rebel force toward Sirte – Gadhafi’s hometown and a bastion of support for the longtime leader.
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The rebels can take on “the rockets and the tanks, but not Gadhafi’s air force,” he said.

Anti-Gadhafi forces would get a massive morale boost if they can blast through Sirte, a major obstacle on the march toward Tripoli.

Libya’s main population centers lie along the country’s main east-west highway on the Mediterranean coast and the struggle for control of the country is being waged between the government and the rebels trying to push the front line westward toward the capital.

A force estimated at 500 to 1,000 fighters was pushing steadily down the highway toward Tripoli when it was driven out of the town of Bin Jawwad, 375 east of the capital, on Sunday by pro-Gadhafi forces using helicopter gunships, artillery and rockets. The fighting killed at least eight people and wounded 59, according to medical officials.

The rebels regrouped about 40 miles to the east in Ras Lanouf, where MiG fighters circled over rebel positions Monday before launching airstrikes behind their front lines in the morning and afternoon.

In and around Bin Jawwad, pro-regime forces were running patrols Monday and there were minor reports of skirmishes with rebels on the outskirts.

One strike hit a road near the town’s only gas station, destroying at least three vehicles and wounding at least two people.

The opposition also holds two main battleground cities close to Tripoli, and the government appears to have solidified control Monday of one of them – Zawiya. Just 30 miles outside Tripoli, Zawiya had been the city closest to the capital in opposition hands.

A Zawiya resident said government tanks and artillery opened fire on rebels around 9:00 am and the attack hadn’t stopped when he left the city at 1:30 p.m. All entrances to the city were under government control and the rebels had been driven out of the city’s central Martyr’s Square and a nearby mosque by the heaviest attack in several days.

“The tanks are everywhere,” he said. “The hospital is running out of supplies. There are injured everywhere who can’t find a place to go.”

Rebels also held much of Misrata, to the east of Tripoli about halfway to Sirte. But Valerie Amos, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement that the Benghazi Red Crescent reported that Misrata was under attack by government forces again Monday. There have been repeated government attempts to regain control of Misrata.

“Humanitarian organizations need urgent access now,” she said. “People are injured and dying and need help immediately.”

The uprising against Gadhafi is already longer and much bloodier than the relatively quick revolts that overthrew the longtime authoritarian leaders of neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

Unusually heavy and sustained shooting that erupted before dawn in Tripoli on Sunday gave rise to rumors and reports that there had been an assassination attempt against Gadhafi by someone inside the fortress-like barracks where he lives.

But a government spokesman, Abdel-Majid al-Dursi, denied it on Monday, calling the claims “baseless rumors.”

Hundreds if not thousands of people have died since Libya’s uprising began, although tight restrictions on media make it near impossible to get an accurate tally. More than 200,000 people have fled the country, most of them foreign workers. The exodus is creating a humanitarian crisis across the border with Tunisia – another North African country in turmoil after an uprising in January that ousted its longtime leader.

The turmoil is being felt more broadly still in the form of rising oil prices. Libya’s oil production has been seriously crippled by the unrest.

The conflict in Libya took a turn late last week when government opponents, backed by mutinous army units and armed with weaponry seized from storehouses, went on the offensive. At the same time, pro-Gadhafi forces have conducted counteroffensives to try to retake the towns and oil ports the rebels have captured since they moved out of the rebel-held east.

Hours later, the tsunami hit Hawaii and warnings blanketed the Pacific, putting areas on alert as far away as South America, Canada, Alaska and the entire U.S. West Coast. In Japan, the area around a nuclear power plant in the northeast was evacuated after the reactor’s cooling system failed

Police said 200 to 300 bodies were found in the northeastern coastal city of Sendai, the city in Miyagi prefecture (state) closest to the quake’s epicenter. Another 88 were confirmed killed and at least 349 were missing. The death toll was likely to continue climbing given the scale of the disaster.

The magnitude-8.9 offshore quake unleashed a 23-foot (seven-meter) tsunami and was followed by more than 50 aftershocks for hours, many of them of more than magnitude 6.0.

Dozens of cities and villages along a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) stretch of coastline were shaken by violent tremors that reached as far away as Tokyo, hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the epicenter. A large section of Kesennuma, a town of 70,000 people in Miyagi, burned furiously into the night with no apparent hope of the flames being extinguished, public broadcaster NHK said.

“The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in northern Japan,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference.

The government ordered thousands of residents near a nuclear power plant in Onahama city to move back at least two miles (three kilometers) from the plant. The reactor was not leaking radiation but its core remained hot even after a shutdown. The plant is 170 miles (270 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.

Trouble was reported at two other nuclear plants as well, but there was no radiation leak at either.

Japan’s coast guard said it was searching for 80 dock workers working on a ship that was swept away from a shipyard in Miyagi.

Even for a country used to earthquakes, this one was of horrific proportions because of the tsunami that crashed ashore, swallowing everything in its path as it surged several miles (kilometers) inland before retreating. The apocalyptic images of surging water and uncontrolled conflagrations broadcast by Japanese TV networks resembled scenes from a Hollywood disaster movie.

Large fishing boats and other sea vessels rode high waves into the cities, slamming against overpasses or scraping under them and snapping power lines along the way. Upturned and partially submerged vehicles were seen bobbing in the water. Ships anchored in ports crashed against each other.

The tsunami roared over embankments, washing anything in its path inland before reversing directions and carrying the cars, homes and other debris out to sea. Flames shot from some of the houses, probably because of burst gas pipes.

Waves of muddy waters flowed over farmland near Sendai, carrying buildings, some on fire, inland as cars attempted to drive away. Sendai airport was inundated with cars, trucks, buses and thick mud deposited over its runways.

The highways to the worst-hit coastal areas were buckled and communications, including telephone lines, were snapped. Train services in northeastern Japan and in Tokyo, which normally serve 10 million people a day, were also suspended, leaving untold numbers stranded in stations or roaming the streets. Tokyo’s Narita airport was closed indefinitely.

Jesse Johnson, a native of the U.S. state of Nevada who lives in Chiba, north of Tokyo, was eating at a sushi restaurant with his wife when the quake hit.

“At first it didn’t feel unusual, but then it went on and on. So I got myself and my wife under the table,” he told The Associated Press. “I’ve lived in Japan for 10 years, and I’ve never felt anything like this before. The aftershocks keep coming. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t know whether it’s me shaking or an earthquake.”

NHK said more than 4 million buildings were without power in Tokyo and its suburbs.

As night fell, the streets were jammed with cars, buses and trucks trying to get around and out of the city. Pedestrians swarmed the sidewalks to walk home, or at least find a warm place to spend the night as the temperatures dropped.

Tomoko Suzuki and her elderly mother stood on a crowded corner in central Tokyo, unable to get up to their 29th-floor condominium because the elevator wasn’t working. They unsuccessfully tried to hail a taxi to go to a relative’s house. They called around to dozens of hotels, but they were full.

“We are so cold,” said Suzuki. “We really don’t know what to do.”

A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in Ichihara city in Chiba prefecture and burned out of control with 100-foot (30 meter) -high flames whipping into the sky.

“Our initial assessment indicates that there has already been enormous damage,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. “We will make maximum relief effort based on that assessment.”

He said the Defense Ministry was sending troops to the quake-hit region. A utility aircraft and several helicopters were on the way.

Also in Miyagi, a fire broke out in a turbine building of a nuclear power plant, but it was later extinguished, said Tohoku Electric Power Co. the company said.

A reactor area of a nearby plant was leaking water, the company said. But it was unclear if the leak was caused by tsunami water or something else. There were no reports of radioactive leaks at any of Japan’s nuclear plants.

Jefferies International Limited, a global investment banking group, said it estimated overall losses to be about $10 billion.

Hiroshi Sato, a disaster management official in northern Iwate prefecture, said officials were having trouble getting an overall picture of the destruction.

“We don’t even know the extent of damage. Roads were badly damaged and cut off as tsunami washed away debris, cars and many other things,” he said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 2:46 p.m. quake was a magnitude 8.9, the biggest earthquake to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s, and one of the biggest ever recorded in the world.

The quake struck at a depth of six miles (10 kilometers), about 80 miles (125 kilometers) off the eastern coast, the agency said. The area is 240 miles (380 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. Several quakes had hit the same region in recent days, including a 7.3 magnitude one on Wednesday that caused no damage.

A tsunami warning was extended to a number of areas in the Pacific, Southeast Asian and Latin American nations, including Japan, Russia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Chile. In the Philippines, authorities ordered an evacuation of coastal communities, but no unusual waves were reported.

Thousands of people fled their homes in Indonesia after officials warned of a tsunami up to 6 feet (2 meters) high. But waves of only 4 inches (10 centimeters) were measured. No big waves came to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, either.

The first waves hit Hawaii about 9 a.m. EST (1400 GMT) Friday. A tsunami at least 3 feet (a meter) high were recorded on Oahu and Kauai, and officials warned that the waves would continue and could become larger.

Japan’s worst previous quake was in 1923 in Kanto, an 8.3-magnitude temblor that killed 143,000 people, according to USGS. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe city in 1996 killed 6,400 people.

Japan lies on the “Ring of Fire” – an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world’s quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 nations. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile last February also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

The next: Wes Leonard on the gym floor, his enlarged heart failing, his life fading just a few moments after his victory layup. Packed bleachers suddenly stunned by an event that made basketball seem a distant, unimportant memory.

A day after Leonard died from an enlarged heart, this small town near Lake Michigan remembered an “all-American kid” whose athletic heroics had been local legend since middle school, when opposing coaches sometimes asked to see his birth certificate, not believing someone so young could be so skilled.

“He was a good kid, a good friend to have and a good person to hang around with,” DeMarcus McGee, who played football and basketball with Leonard, said between sobs. “You never thought it could be him. He was so healthy. It shouldn’t happen.”

On Thursday evening, Leonard sent the ball through the hoop from close range with less than 30 seconds left in overtime. The final shot gave Fennville High a 57-55 victory over Bridgman High and a 20-0 regular season.

After the teams exchanged handshakes, Fennville players celebrated. Some began scrambling to organize a team photo that would commemorate their undefeated record. That’s when the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Leonard collapsed, with an estimated 1,400 fans watching.

“Thirty seconds earlier, he was laying in the winning bucket,” said Ryan Klingler, basketball coach in Fennville, about 200 miles west of Detroit. “And then 10 seconds later … everything’s pulled out from under you, from out of nowhere.”

Leonard was rushed to nearby Holland Hospital, where paramedics performed CPR before he was pronounced dead. An autopsy conducted Friday by the Ottawa County medical examiner showed Leonard died of cardiac arrest due to an enlarged heart.

“It shouldn’t have been like this,” teammate Adam Siegel said. “Too young.”

Medical examiner David Start said the stress Leonard placed on his heart through athletics could have played a role, but his death could not be easily explained.

“Why at this event as opposed to another basketball or football game, I don’t know,” Start told the Grand Rapids Press. He did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.

Grief counselors were available Friday for students at the school. Delivery trucks dropped off trays full of flowers. Students made signs in tribute to Leonard and planned to display them in the hallways.

Many who knew Leonard said he was destined for athletic greatness from a young age. He was a top performer in baseball and football, too.

Vicki Lepior, who owns a roofing company, used to coach baseball against Leonard when he was a fourth-grader.

“When I saw him pitch, I told my boys, `You better move back in the box just a little bit,’” Lepior said of the boy she called “Big Man Wes.”

“He was just the kid that everybody loved, and there isn’t a mother on Earth who doesn’t feel (what his mother) feels.”

Chad VanHuis, who once umpired Leonard’s middle-school baseball games, remembered opposing coaches asking to see his birth certificate.

“He was very courteous. He was the nicest kid. You’d think with his star potential, because he’s so gifted, he’d be cocky, but he never really was that way,” VanHuis said.

When he reached Fennville High, Leonard really took off, playing as a starter for three years on the football team, first as a receiver, then as a quarterback and defensive end.

“He had a personality that, when people were around him, they played better,” said Tim Schipper, Leonard’s football coach. “Everybody around him played better, because he was a leader and the best athlete.”

Schipper had expected Leonard to take his talents into college athletics at some level, although his prospects were unclear.

Leonard, who played basketball as a freshman and then spent two seasons as a starter, led the Blackhawks throughout the 2010 season.

“He was just an amazing kid,” Klingler said. “What made him special is he had a passion about everything he did. That’s what separated him – his passion. He had a passion to compete. He had a passion to be his best.”

A visitation for Leonard was set for Sunday, with a funeral Tuesday.

The Fennville team is scheduled to compete in the Class C district playoffs Monday, but officials at the high school with more than 400 students had not decided Friday whether to play the game.

“That’s way, way down the road,” Klingler said. “We’re going to make sure we’re all in a good, healthy place before we decide on anything.”

Leonard’s mother, Jocelyn, is a choir teacher at the middle and high schools and director of Fennville High’s production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” A performance of the musical scheduled for Friday was canceled, and it was uncertain whether the Saturday and Sunday shows would happen, either.

Fennville Superintendent Dirk Weeldreyer remembered Leonard as “the quintessential all-American kid.”

“Beyond his outstanding athletic abilities, Wes was a better person,” Weeldreyer said. “His fellow students liked and respected him. Their grief speaks volumes about the high regard in which Wes was held.”

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Associated Press writer Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report.

WATCH WES MAKE THE GAME-WINNING SHOT:

Coming from the lips of a mightily talented ten year old, Gaga’s lyrics take on a new resonance. Despite performing the song at the Grammys after having recently emerged from an egg, lines like “I’m on the right track baby, I was born this way,” seem to demonstrate a more literal truth in the hands of such a talented youngster. Watch the video below:

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UPDATE III: The Associated Press reports on Marie’s death, with a list of her songs and background on her career.

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UPDATE II: CNN, for whom Martin works, is also reporting that her manager confirms that Teena Marie passed away.
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UPDATE: Martin reports that Marie’s manager told him that Marie’s daughter found her dead in her home today, and that she suffered a seizure last month. To follow the story, head over to Martin’s Twitter feed.
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According to Roland Martin, R&B singer Teena Marie has passed away at the age of 54. Martin RadioFacts.com was the first to report the news; they sent along the link to Philadelphia radio station WDAS.

Born Marie Christine Brockert, Teena Marie rose to prominence in the late 70s and 80s, striking a musical and personal partnership with funk legend Rick James. She released 13 studio albums, six of which went platinum on the US R&B chart. Two of her albums went platinum, and six altogether were gold.

Marie’s biggest hit came in 1984 with her single ‘Lovergirl,’ which peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Watch a 1985 performance of the song below:

The poll, released Monday, asked respondents what man and woman, living anywhere in the world, they most admired. Rankings from one to 10 were based on total mentions and reported in percentages.

Obama has been the poll’s most-admired man since his election in 2008. With 22 percent choosing him, Obama leads his predecessors, George W. Bush, with 5 percent, and Bill Clinton, with 4 percent.

However, Obama’s percentage has fallen over the years. In 2008 he led the list with 32 percent and in 2009 with 30 percent.

Rounding out the top 10 most-admired men, with 2 percent or less: former South African President Nelson Mandella, computer tycoon Bill Gates, Pope Benedict XVI, the Rev. Billy Graham, former President Jimmy Carter, talk-show host Glenn Beck and the Dalai Lama.

Hillary Clinton has been the most-admired woman in the poll 15 times since 1992, when she first appeared following her husband’s election as president. She leads this year with 17 percent, followed by Palin with 12 percent, Winfrey with 11 percent, and first lady Michelle Obama with 5 percent.

Rounding out the top most-admired women, with 2 percent or less: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Queen Elizabeth, actress Angelina Jolie, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and, in a three-way tie for ninth place, Burmese democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi and former first ladies Laura Bush and Barbara Bush.

The USA Today-Gallup survey, conducted Dec. 10-12, is based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,019 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Back when she was still working, Campos-Dunn, 42, earned $4,000 a month, enough to make her co-payments for regular medical care. These days, she depends on $300 a month contributions from her 16-year-old son–money he earns at a part-time job–just to pay to the rent. When a recent seizure left her with two broken teeth, she skipped the required treatment and opted to have the teeth pulled instead, because she lacked the funds–a choice that would have previously seemed unthinkable.

As the Great Recession has sown unemployment and downgraded work even for those people who have held on to their jobs, the number of Americans lacking healthcare has swelled beyond 50 million, according to a sobering new report from the Kaiser Foundation.

Among the report’s most troubling findings: The number of Americans without any health care coverage grew by more than four million in 2009. That left almost one-fifth of non-elderly people uninsured. Among those between 19 and 29 years old, nearly one-third lacked coverage.

The study underscores the degree to which the recession has accelerated the loss of basic elements once viewed as inextricable pieces of a middle class life. The number of Americans lacking medical coverage now exceeds the population of Spain.

Nearly all Americans over 65 are insured by Medicare, the government-run health care plan, but those beneath that age are increasingly vulnerable to losing health care once provided by their employers or finding themselves unable to afford private coverage, according to the report, “The Uninsured: A Primer.”

As those lacking health insurance grow in number, so do those missing out on necessary medical attention. About one-in-four uninsured adults have forgone care in the past year because of costs, compared to only 4 percent of those who have private coverage, according to the report.

Those lacking health coverage are vulnerable to what has become a commonplace financial calamity: confronting a medical emergency, and having to pay for care entirely out of pocket. This year, 27% of uninsured adults used up most or all of their savings paying medical bills, according to the study. Half of these uninsured households had total assets of $600 or less.

Medicaid covers Americans with the lowest incomes, but that fact merely mitigates conditions for people in abysmal circumstances: Medicaid beneficiaries are typically in much worse health than those with private coverage. They are likely to have incomes that place them well below the poverty line, and to suffer health conditions that impede their ability to work, exacerbating their difficulties.

Under the health reforms championed by President Obama, Medicaid is set to expand in 2014 to cover almost all people under 65 with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty line. That would provide health care to many more Americans who now lack coverage. But until then, many Americans will continue to shoulder the burden of unaffordable health care costs.

The soaring number of people falling through the cracks and going without health insurance is in large part the result of the recession, which has eliminated millions of jobs, along with employer-sponsored coverage. Roughly half of all working age Americans with insurance have it through their employer.

Even among those who have avoided unemployment, millions have been forced to take temporary or part-time positions for lack of available full-time work, often surrendering their benefits in the process.

More than half of those who are officially unemployed have no health coverage whatsoever, according to a Rutgers University study, “The Shattered American Dream: Unemployed Workers Lose Ground, Hope, and Faith in their Future.” Those numbers increase to nearly 60% for those who have been unemployed for over six months. Six in ten unemployed Americans have been unemployed for over a year.

Yet even if the economy soon adds more jobs and lowers the ranks of the unemployed, the scarcity of health coverage is likely to endure, argues one of the study’s authors, Carl Van Horn, Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University and Director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Long before the recession, he noted, having a job conveyed no guarantee of coverage.

“Just recovery of jobs isn’t sufficent to address the issue,” he said. “A lot of the jobs that people are getting are part-time jobs and/or don’t have healthcare benefits attached to them.”

And even those who are eligible for healthcare in the wake of job loss cannot always take advantage of what is available to them.

“It’s pretty obvious that government policies are confusing,” Van Horn said. “A lot of folks are losing their jobs for the first time and they don’t know what they’re even entitled to.”

Paying for healthcare can be one of the first things to go for families dealing with constrained finances. Over 50% of those surveyed said that healthcare was one of the expenses they could not afford to pay.

“We have an employer-based healthcare system,” Van Horn said. “And if your lose your job, unless you’re old or very poor, you have no health care insurance.”

In San Mateo, California, just south of San Francisco, Francis Campos-Dunn understands this fact all too well. For years, she has contended with a variety of often-expensive health problems, making her insurance situation particularly crucial.

Her administrative job at the San Mateo County Hospital provided for her needs and also delivered insurance for her son and a granddaughter. But late last year, she was laid off, and so began a painful and bewildering lesson in the particularities of the American health care system.

Kaiser, the giant health maintenance organization, offered her the option to continue her health insurance for $1,500 dollars a month. But that outstripped her total income– a disability payment of $1,300 a month.

So Campos-Dunn turned to Medical, California’s state-run health insurance–the state’s version of Medicaid. But they told her that her income exceeded the allowable limit by $32 a month and denied her claim, she says. Undeterred, she appealed, was granted a hearing and was subsequently approved for the state insurance.

But three weeks later, another letter arrived informing her that once again, she made too much money to qualify for the state’s health insurance. Since her unemployment, she has struggled with this ceaseless back and forth with the bureaucracy, going without care for weeks in between.

“I never thought I’d be in this position,” she said. “I used to help families get on insurance. I used to hear all these problems. I used to think anything was possible to try to figure out a way around it so they could get health insurance. Now I have no health insurance.”

With her medical condition continuing to require care, her battle to keep up has worn her down past the point where she can even muster the effort to continue fighting.

“It got up to a point where I didn’t even try to deal with them anymore,” she said. “If I ended up in the hospital I’d just pay the bill.”

She now owes Kaiser over $55,000, she says. She owes the San Mateo County Hospital–her old employer– over $22,000.

“I just don’t think it’s right,” she said. “I’ve been working since I was 15 years old and now I can’t access what I need because I make 32 dollars too much.”